Narrative  11

The baseball game:

I remember being a child I hated playing baseball. Mainly because I used to be a “benchwarmer.” Nothing more humiliating and nothing to make me love the game!

More than twenty years later I was taking a walk in the early evening in Lafontaine Park, with a hint of loneliness and melancholy in my heart, when I came across a baseball game played by a small band of youngsters.

There was something in the air that night that decided me to dwell: the shouts of encouragement from parents sitting in the small bleachers; the warmth of this late summer evening; the feeling to suddenly be in an American movie archetype on childhood nostalgia.

Those few minutes I spent watching this joust, which was ending, became one of my most beautiful moments of relaxation and well-being of my life; certainly in the top 10! I so wanted this game lasts and lasts...

Later, resuming my walk, I had a lighter heart; I had the feeling of having touched and "recovered" a part of my youth, my childhood, where I wasn’t able to enjoy this game in all its glory because of the spirit of fierce competition of my coaches of yesteryear.

I was so happy for those few minutes in the park as much as I am now revealing to you, with a colorful of grace, understanding, forgiveness and acceptance, this story which belongs to my childhood memory...

Narrative 3

I remember after my Saturday evening big weekly bath, my mother making me an neapolitan ice cream cone and then going to the living room watching Thierry la Fronde (The King's Outlaw) and then Hockey Night, with dad in his armchair and mom on the sofa and me right in front of the TV, sitting on the cold floor.

I was three.

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I remember having a terrible fit because my parents went out to the movies, a weekend, and hitting with all my strengths my red plastic boat on the front door, and shouting, howling, crying to show my anger in front of my babysitter totally helpless. Suddenly, I stopped everything and I noticed dozens of red marks which I had made on the door and then I was afraid I’ll be punished.

I was around two.

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I remember vaguely my little sister sleeping in her crib in my parents’ bedroom.

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I remember being five when I heard that our neighbor, Mrs. Tardy, woke up one morning and her husband, sleeping next to her, was dead. Not knowing it, she slept with a dead body next to her all night. This really traumatized me, upset me. A lot. I don’t know why…

Narrative 2

I remember the military parade at the top of the hill, on 1st Avenue, near the former Igloo, the ice cream counter. I was two years old.

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I remember around three, four years old, being at the cabin of a friend, who lived the neighboring house of mine, and trying to look through a hole, below the outhouse, where my friend had gone to the toilet, to see his booty!

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I remember, also, squabbling with a friend and then running to catch him up, when he wanted to leave, angry, to apologise and when I got out of the house, I stumble on the threshold, which was, like, one and a half-inch thick, and although I tried to hang on to the door frame, I fell on the corner of a metal tank, which was upside down, that mom used to soak the linen in, and I split open my right eyebrow and the skin over my nose. I remember crying a lot, blood flowing like water on my face and my mother carrying me in her arms to daddy's big old truck. Then dad in turn carrying me in his arms up the hospital’s staircases instead of waiting for the elevator which was too long to come.

(It’s strange, but I can feel, right at this moment, how they must have been worried for me I’d lose my eye or I’d die. Twenty years later, maybe they would wish I die, after all…)

I remember the doctor putting a sheet over my head, with only one hole for my eye. I remember the needle entering in and out of my skin. I had the feeling that the hand of the doctor was entering along with the needle and going in and out of my head. I remember, later, sitting on our stairs outside the house, my friends coming to see me, and feeling almost proud to show them my stitches. I was about four, five years old.

Narrative


I was born October 2 at 6:55 in the morning.

In my childhood, I remember, when I played outside that my mother attached me with a kind of leather leash with a harness and with which I was attached to the outside bannister. I was between two and three years old.